ŠARI DALE writes from Baton Rouge, where she’s pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Louisiana State University. Her poetry has been published in Grain, The Malahat Review, and Room, among others, and anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry and Poetry Daily. Her debut collection, Para-Social Butterfly, was released with Metatron Press.

Šari Dale (ŠD): So, where are you based? I thought it might be Canada because Things A Bright Boy Can Do was published with Coach House.

Michael Chang (MC): I live in New York. Manhattan. Where are you?

ŠD: Louisiana. I'm wrapping up an MFA at LSU. Did you take the MFA route, too?

MC: I didn't. I studied politics, then went to law school. I passed the Bar, like I'm a full-fledged lawyer. During COVID, I started writing more poems—then publishing them, and once you have a few books out, you don't really need an MFA.

ŠD: True. Maybe it’s being in a program, but I’ve become a bit jaded with poetry. How some things are considered more “poetic” than others. Your work doesn't seem to give a shit. It’s brilliant and hilarious. There are moments of subjectivity, then you'll break into these lists of images and intrusions, you know? Like all the advertising language.

MC: I pull from everything I live through and experience. It sounds obvious, but lots of people have poetry brain. They think, Oh, this is what a poem should sound like, but I don't have that. That's why you see snippets of overheard conversations or things from TV. Or me walking through the city and listening to what's going on. There's not much daylight between all those. They're very pertinent and important to me. That tension makes it interesting.

ŠD: That structure holds more space for surprise. For anomalies. I don’t see that often. Some poems are so formulaic—I’ll start reading one and know how it’ll end within the first couple of lines.

MC: I approach writing like a diss track. Instead of one grand realization at the end, each line should be its own grand realization. Sometimes you know what a poem is doing, and it feels, like you said, formulaic, but that’s part of a bigger problem. You shouldn't start writing a poem if you have nothing to say. For me, there's something I want to get across, and I try to do it in a fun way. A way that people will be more receptive to.

ŠD: Your speaker is so refreshing. It doesn’t ask me to pity it or sympathize with it. It lets me take what I need from the poem. How do you see yourself in relation to your speaker?

MC: There isn’t an elegant answer to that. It’s a bit boring to tell people, Oh, that's me, or, This is what that’s based on. But I think the speaker is me—maybe an amped up version. But what happens to them hasn’t necessarily happened to me.

ŠD: People often read poems as if they’re nonfiction. I’ve had people ask, Has this really happened to you? And I’m like, This has never happened to anyone.

MC: It’s not that the speaker is stale or tired. It's what people choose to write about that feels like, We’ve seen this 500 times before. There’s nothing wrong with the speaker being you. I won’t rail against that. It’s what that speaker does that’s boring.

ŠD: Speaking of the “telling,” what's your approach to form?  

MC: It’s instinctive. If I write a poem, and it doesn’t feel right, I try it in a different shape. Then I'll set it aside and come back to it. If it feels right, I leave it. Sometimes, I revert it to the original because it doesn’t feel like it’s gelling. Most of the time, I figure out the words first, then have a feel for what it wants to look like on the page. 

There's also the more boring, realistic answer, which is that if you have a larger collection, you need more of that variation. If you know the collection’s going to be 100+ pages, you’re naturally going to be thinking, Are they all left margins? Or whatever, right?

ŠD: What else did you consider when putting Things a Bright… together?

MC: I knew it would be a bigger book. Some of the poems are short and quick, and I thought I needed more of them. It’s different when you’re approaching a publisher with a collection versus entering it in contests, which usually have page limits. So, I was free of that particular constraint, and I felt like Things a Bright… needed to be robust because it covers so much ground. I wanted it to feel expansive. Naturally, all of that lent itself to a longer product. 

ŠD: Did you work on it during COVID?

MC: It would’ve been 2022-2023. 

ŠD: I ask because it seems like such an online book. It reflects what it feels like to live and breathe on the Internet. There’s so much happening. You’re taking in horrific news headlines alongside TikToks of kittens or whatever.

MC: It is online, but not for the sake of it, you know? I didn’t set out to write an Internet-driven book. But because I set out to write a human-driven book, and especially in that moment, most of us were spending a ton of time online, it turned out like that.

ŠD: Interesting. You mentioned that snippets of overheard conversations appear in your poems—is being out and about quite central to your process?

MC: It is. Being in a big city and taking the train or walking is a huge part. Meeting new people is huge, too. There's this New York School vibe that people who don't live here try to replicate, but it doesn’t work. It comes off as forced or fake. But when I do it, I'm actually doing it. So, you see that texture.

ŠD: I’m curious about how that works—like when you sit down to write, do you draw from notes you took while out?

MC: If I take notes, I don't refer back to them. Recently, I was working with someone on their manuscript, and he said, Oh, I have like three long Word Docs of notes I've taken. I was like, Well, throw those out. When you’re constantly referring back, you lose that realness, you know? So, I try not to do that. The actual composition happens more in my head. Once it's done, I put it on paper. For the most part, it's a marination. Mulling over observations.

ŠD: I admire the leaps in your poems. Like, What's coming next? I don't know.

MC: Your work does that, too.

ŠD: It does, but it's more radical in yours.

MC: I've come across poets whose leaps feel more calculated. It’s like they wrote something else, then swapped out a word or two. It's very Mad Libs. Like, I'll write this word then plug in something else and see if that makes it more interesting.

ŠD: Totally. I learned this technique as an undergraduate—can’t remember what it was called—but you were supposed to use images that were related to one another. It was supposed to help the poem create meaning. So calculated.

MC: Poetry is fun because it’s different from fiction. I don’t have to arrive at a predetermined destination. I don’t have to drive the plot forward. I want my work to glide. It shouldn't feel like the light-rail or something. It has to feel crafted and thoughtful, but also fun and interesting.

ŠD: Do you edit your work after-the-fact?

MC: All I change are titles, especially if they’re in a collection. Not that my original titles are placeholders, but sometimes when I look at a title in relation to other titles in a collection, it’s too matchy-matchy. I’d change that. As for the poems… I mean, I was looking at a proof of one being published in the spring. I took out a comma, but that was the extent of it.

ŠD: How do you think about your work in relation to the “poetic tradition”?

MC: Lazy people say I'm very New York School. But I like poets that aren’t part of that tradition, too. I like W.S. Merwin. Jimmy Merrill. Strangely, on my Mount Rushmore of poets, three out of four are old, dead white men. What I do like about the New York School poets as influences is that I feel less tempted to copy them. Their reality was so different from ours, and that time and place is so baked into their poems. It's like I'm less reliant on their work as a training wheel. That's how I look at them. I don't want an influence that's still alive. That I can email. And, of course, with them being dead, there's no one to call me out if I'm misrepresenting them.

ŠD: You really don't seem scared of being called out, though. There's a poem in Things a Bright… composed of rumors about celebrated poets. Did publishing that freak you out?

MC: No. Some of them have even blurbed my work since then. It comes back to who you're writing about. If it’s the richest person in the world, no one cares. And with their stature in poetry, I think it's fair game. It's fun. More people should do it. I think they’re reluctant to because they're in academia and might need a blurb or a recommendation letter. But I'm at the point in my “career” where if someone I mention in a poem is pissed at me, I don't really care.

ŠD: I would love to ask about your upcoming chapbook, HEROES.

MC: I don't like talking in terms of themes or “obsessions,” but it’s very me. Poems from it were published in The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review—more conservative magazines. But they still retain their charm and are very risque. It's a nice little sampler of my work.

ŠD: Speaking of magazines, are there some you wouldn’t send work to?

MC: If you want to see yourself published, that’s something to consider. It isn't so much a question of fit. It's more high-level, like, At their most charitable, would the editors be into it? I’ve been an editor and judge, and so much goes into it. Like someone’s publications and how long the issue is. In the end, most credible places are willing to take a chance on someone. I encourage people to send it out. Don't self-select yourself out of a publication.

ŠD: You went from writing to publishing fast—was it pretty easy for you?

MC: It was pretty easy. Sometimes people are lying when they say it's about the quality of the work, but usually, that's close to the truth. I submitted to a million places. I didn’t care about being rejected because I don’t want to work with someone who I have to talk into liking my stuff. I want to work with someone who gets it. I was lucky to find people who did.

For contests, you should find out who the judge is and do your best to guess their style. Editors are usually more kind of receptive to different styles—if they were really narrow in their understanding of poetry, then they wouldn't publish their friends or neighbours or whatever. That’s all to say, don't be shy about just sending to as many people as possible and to editors who, on paper, wouldn't get your work.

ŠD: Do you have any pet peeves in poetry? 

MC: Give me an example.

ŠD: Like using the phrase “prickly pear.”

MC: For me, that wouldn't rise to the level of a pet peeve. For me, a pet peeve is if it's too derivative, like a poor imitation of someone else's work. Not like plagiarism, but like in its tone. I was reading a suite of poems online a few months ago. They were by a professor, not at a great school, but still. It was so obviously derivative of a very well-known poet’s work. So, I was like, What are you teaching your students if this is the work that you're putting out in the world? It wasn't a great magazine, either. Probably, like two people read it.

ŠD: Don't be boring or derivative. 

MC: Oh, and with contests and submissions, I don't like when people shoot themselves in the foot. Like, I judged a contest where you could’ve sent up to five poems, and people would send three. I'm like, Why would you do that? Out of the five, maybe four are shit, but the fifth could be the winner. Straight up not following the directions, too. I was talking to someone I came up with writing-wise, and he would put his name in his poems. And I was like, Haven't you had work rejected because of that?

ŠD: Those are good ones.

MC: Oh, I don’t know if it’s a pet peeve, but I don't like when interviewers ask, Who are you reading? And the person being interviewed names all their contemporaries. You can tell they're just name-dropping, you know? It’s so weird. It's like on Twitter when someone stans a writer, and you know it’s not because their work is good. They just want to study with them at Sewannee or whatever. I think the people who like my work are more real. I don't have a ton of fake fans or whatever. Fake groupies. 

ŠD: Not “fake groupies.” There is lots of clout-chasing online, though.

MC: I listened to an interview you did, and you mentioned Chelsey Minnis. I didn’t know people knew who she was. 

ŠD: Oh, really? Maybe I'm in a Chelsey Minnis echo chamber. I’m like, We all know her! Then no one does. It’s like that with most poets, though. Poem-fame is so small. She’s great, though—she does the least. Rarely does interviews or readings. Don’t think she teaches. Actually, your writing reminds me of hers. 

MC: Did you hear she has a new book coming out with Wave? I would never publish with Wave —I like having more control over my covers. I’ve sourced the art for every single book I've done, including HEROES. 

ŠD: Which comes out in 2026? 

MC: Well, we’re trying to have it out by the end of 2025, but it's a little tricky with the holidays. If it's not out by then, it’ll at least be with the printer. The interiors are done.

ŠD: Exciting! I can’t wait to read it.

Michael Chang’s fifth full-length collection of poems, Things A Bright Boy Can Do, is unmistakably their own: Intelligent, irreverent, and weirdly entertaining. “Weirdly” in that I can’t remember the last time I chose reading a poem instead of scrolling on TikTok or watching Bravo’s latest release. Chang’s work has that effect: Borderline habit-forming. I could chalk it up to their attunement to politics and popular culture or their razor-sharp witticisms, but, more than that, it’s their irreverence. These poems don’t care about conventions —they write their own definition of “poetry.” There’s no mock-sincerity, no searching for meaning where meaning doesn’t exist. Left-alignment, along with “proper” grammar and punctuation, is optional. What results is a collection as bright as its title implies.

After reading their work for New Delta Review’s Chapbook Competition, I had the pleasure of chatting with Chang over Zoom about fake groupies, prickly pears, their forthcoming chapbook, HEROES, and much more.

Heroes. Michael Chang, 845 PRESS , Forthcoming. 

Volume 16.1  ✧  Winter 26

Šari Dale

Don't Be Boring: An Interview With Michael Chang